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Christopher Voss
Christopher Voss was the FBI's lead international kidnapping negotiator from 2003 – 2007. He is a retired 24 year veteran of the FBI and is currently the founder of a negotiation consulting firm, named The Black Swan Group.

Voss was assigned to the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit (CNU) from 2000 – 2007. He worked cases which included the Jill Carroll case in Iraq, the Steve Centanni (Fox News) case in the Gaza Strip, the Burnham – Sobero case (Philippines – Abu Sayyaf), to the Gonsalves-Howes-Stansell kidnapping in Colombia which culminated in the July 2008 rescue by Colombian forces.

While assigned to the FBI CNU, Voss was also the FBI hostage negotiation subject matter expert for the National Security Council's Hostage Working Group and the US hostage negotiation subject matter expert representative to the G-8. He was also one of the lead CNU instructors in the FBI’s National Crisis Negotiation Course.

Voss has worked approximately 150 kidnappings worldwide, from the Middle East to Haiti to the Philippines. Voss has been trained by the FBI, Scotland Yard (the London Metropolitan Police) and Harvard.

Voss was a guest speaker at the University of Virginia’s Critical Incident Analysis Group in the Spring 2005 conference which was entitle “Hostage to Terrorism: Governmental and Non-Governmental Response Strategies” and the Terrorism and Emergency Management Conference held at John Jay College in New York City in 2002.

Among the US sieges that Voss was involved in as a negotiator were the DC Sniper, The Washington, DC “Tractor Man” incident in 2003 and the Chase Manhattan Bank Robbery Hostage Taking in Brooklyn, New York in 1993, along with dozens of other smaller incidents nationwide from 2000 – 2007, while assigned to the FBI Crisis Negotiation Unit.

Prior to becoming the FBI lead international kidnapping negotiator, Voss was a member of the New York City Joint Terrorist Task Force for 14 years (1986 -- 2000) and was co-case agent for TERRSTOP (the Blind Sheik Case – Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman) and the TWA Flight 800 Catastrophe. While in New York City, Voss was the lead Crisis Negotiator for the New York City Division of the FBI.

Voss is a recipient of the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in Law Enforcement and the FBI Agents Association Award for Distinguished and Exemplary Service.

Voss has taught counter-terrorism, hostage negotiation and hostage survival internationally and was on the Harvard Law School teaching staff. He is a graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government where he received a Masters of Public Administration in June of 2008.

Voss’ company, The Black Swan Group consults on both business negotiation, and kidnapping and terrorism related incidents. Among the essential concepts for responding and preparing for a kidnapping event Voss specializes in are Kidnapping Avoidance, Hostage Survival and a Corporation’s Best Response to a Kidnapping Event.

Voss’ business negotiation consulting in based on applying the lessons of hostage, crisis and kidnapping negotiation to the business negotiation world. Voss’s experiences in working to improve the FBI counter-kidnapping response strategies were greatly influenced by what he learned from the Harvard Program on Negotiation (both as a student and an instructor) and from private sector negotiation consulting firms such as Triad Consulting and the Jim Camp Group.

Voss’s contention is that what he learned from Jim Camp’s book “Start With No” blended easily with what the FBI was doing in its negotiation program and was an important influence in developing new strategies for that program.